Creating What I'm Looking For & What Inspires Me

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About Me

A few years ago, I was at a job promotion interview when one of the panel members asked me what I was most proud of having done with my life. Fortunately, I had a hobby in which my activities of the prior year provided me with an honest response. I had written a short story which held special meaning for me above anything else, because of my having been able to produce something I had long wanted to consume. Part of my aesthetic approach while writing it had been to create something to justify what value my perspective on life had been up until that point, and to nourish the confidence I needed to build upon that achievement.

Recently, the desire to return to I how felt when I wrote my last sentence in that story I still care about—the feeling of being on a mountaintop, ready to go flying—encouraged me to get back to bicycling, and to pay more attention to my physical fitness and health, so as to better serve my mind and imagination. Now it’s back to serious and consistent writing, which leads me to the creation of My Kind of Story.

I never forgot what a strong effect the ending of Superman: The Movie left upon me, when I was a little boy. I remember naively thinking why somebody couldn’t write a Superman story where he turns back time in order to undo all of mankind’s suffering. (Naturally, he wouldn’t be able to stop them from committing the same mistakes.) But the idea was interesting to leave swimming in the head of a kid with an overactive imagination. The spark of an idea came to me in late 2009, thanks to impressions I got from listening to the DVD commentary tracks on The Films ofKennethAnger. Originally, I saw this new story as a short, wordless cartoon; then, as a children’s book. After months of scribbling notes, while educating myself on various subjects, and trying to figure out which direction to take, in May of 2010, I forced myself to write a definitive synopsis which left me satisfied, in regards to what I wanted out of it. I tried to imagine all of life seen from afar, woven together as a tapestry of interacting experiences. Then came the interpretation that a material containing such combinations and patterns could be something used for identifying and measuring value. And this point of view I thought best if considered similar to how some read the early myths: as metaphors for inspiring investments in time. I’ve been trying to do it justice ever since. It’s completion is one of my short-term goals. It’s titled Why We Became You.